Category Archives: Change

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A year ago today everyone was talking about and viewing the eclipse

Observing science "live" is an important piece of learning, asking questions, being curious

A year ago today I was very fortunate to be part of a NASA sponsored team launching high altitude balloons in Idaho to record data about the total eclipse.

This is the shadow of the Moon from about 23,000 meters (75,000 feet) above Camas, Idaho

Meantime back in northern Nevada where I work, thousands of students and members of the general public were using the tens of thousands of eclipse glasses science educators had acquired and passed out to local schools. The eclipse in Nevada was not total, but it was still a site to see.

 

Total Eclipse 2017, Camas ID, USA, by Dr. Jeffrey LaCombe

The eclipse took the nation by storm and millions took to staring into the sky and learning about what was really happening. When we got back from our Idaho trip we processed the photos, video and data and made it available to anyone that wanted it. We also shared the experience with students and teachers when we did teacher trainings or classroom visits. Students and teachers would not only express awe at watching our video of the Moon’s shadow moving across the Earth’s surface, but eager hands would shoot up begging to share their own experiences watching the eclipse and the various ways they monitored it.

Providing access to experiences like eclipses, but also snow falling, or a thunderstorm or leaves changing color in fall and then allowing students to unpack them, express their awe and interest and even giving the time to research on their own are great ways to have students utilize technology to learn. Having students then publish their learning and photos and other media through blogs, photo sites, web pages and other places is where edtech is at its best. If your students are mainly doing everything Google and only publish in house or to your classroom walls you might want to consider publishing to the world to leverage the motivation to learn and polish what they publish in creative, expressive ways.

Learning is messy!

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Our Annual High Altitude Balloon Project Is Coming Together

We'll launch your "High Hopes" for the world!

NOTE: If you’d like to be part of this project you and your students can send us their “High Hopes” for their school, community and the world and we will launch them up high to 100,000 feet where they will be released to slowly drift down to the ground and become one with the Earth. We’ll print your hopes on biodegradable paper designed to compost. Send your “High Hopes” here or you can tweet them to us by using the hashtag #hhpSTEM. 

We had planned on launching May 17, 2018, but somewhat unusual spring rains have made the high desert dirt roads we rely on a bit sloppy for recovery. Our current launch date is June 1, 2018, weather permitting.

This year Virginia City High School students are designing the engineering and science payloads that will reach altitudes of 80,000 to more than 100,000 feet.

Every “high hopes” launch includes payloads to carry and release the world’s high hopes that are printed out on biodegradable paper. Past designs have attempted to be mechanical in nature using a timer or altimeter to trigger a motor to spring a latch and release the “hopes.” However no group has successfully completed that kind of design, usually because of class time constraints, so they end up with a payload that relies on the chaos that ensues post balloon burst as the payloads plummet to the ground (before the parachute gets enough atmosphere to slow things down) to open flaps on the sides and release the “hopes” … which works well, but engineering motors, Arduinos, pulleys and all is intriguing, so we’ll see what happens.

Engineering payload motor driven latch release for world’s “high hopes.”

Another group is looking into gluing seeds to some of the high hopes in order to spread some flowers around the desert. They are researching what seeds they can distribute that way (don’t want to plant invasive species) and have contacted the local authorities about their idea. They are developing a water soluble glue that also might provide some nutrition for the seeds as well.

Mixing a trial batch of bio-degradable glue.

 

 

 

 

 

 

A payload designed to see how sound is effected by the thin atmosphere at high altitudes is taking on a Star Wars theme. The plan is to play the theme music from Star Wars while a camera records the image, but more importantly the sound during flight through a speaker that is insulated from vibrating the payload, so the sound must travel via the air. Does the thin air effect the sound? 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This should be an interesting payload to fly!

 

 

 

Yet another group wants to test a design to protect plants from the freezing, dry conditions they’ll encounter during the flight (actually very much like conditions on Mars). They’ve set up a group of plants to launch and a identical set to stay on the ground to compare with. They are trying several different ways to insulate the seedlings and seeds they will launch.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Students have also set up a social media campaign including Twitter and Instagram to ask for others to submit their high hopes. Please send us your high hopes and we will launch them high into the stratosphere!

Learning is messy!

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Bee-Bot Cadre 1st Meet-Up

Last spring I was able to purchase, thanks to some unspent funding from a grant, 3 Bee-Bot “Hives” – they are about $600 each – each “hive” includes 6 Bee-Bots, a charging plate and a yellow backpack for transporting them. With time short before the school year ran out I taught/facilitated a quick class with 6 teachers from 3 schools to gauge teacher and student interest and learning using robots in the primary grades.

The idea was to facilitate teachers in their use and then loan a hive to each school – the participating teachers shared the hives at their site. Teachers and their students loved them and didn’t want to give them up. We even came up with a “STEAM” activity that I shared here.

With that success I was able to get funding for an additional 6 “Hives” this fall. Last Wednesday we started a year long cadre of Kindergarten to 2nd grade teachers (I couldn’t get any Pre-K teachers to join). There are about 27 teachers in the cadre from 9 schools and a local children’s museum.

I included the teachers from last spring, and although I feared what they might do if I didn’t include them, the reality is they are all excellent consultants and have already added much to the class.

In preparation for class I charged 54 Bee-Bots (9 “hives”) so they’d be ready to go.

We learned how Bee-Bots work and saw a few short videos showing them in action. Next teachers were given some time to get “messy” with them. Lots of button pushing, discussion and laughter ensued.

Then I passed out large sheets of foam board and let them work in school groups to design straw mazes so they could experience firsthand what their students would be doing (but you can use blocks and lots of other materials you might already have in your classroom).

I also shared a Bee-Bot wiki resource we started last spring and will add to as the year goes on. I was able to include a yellow digital camera in each hive (the color match is awesome). The cameras are NOT part of what comes with a hive, but I wanted a way to collect and archive data and ideas and the cameras were available.  I’ll also set up a Flickr account for this class, like we had last spring. We’ll collect data on how long a program students write without prompting to see their progress during the year.

The teachers were sent out with their hives to get started and set-up how they want to manage and utilize the Bee-Bots in their classrooms – the teachers from the spring cadre shared some of their experiences which should help. We meet again next week. More later.

Learning is messy!

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Da Vinci Mechanics Exhibit – Machines, Engineering, “Making” and More

Inspiration for "making" in your classroom

Da Vinci A few years ago (2015) my wife and I were in Christchurch, New Zealand, and we came upon this hands-on Da Vinci Mechanics Exhibit at the Canterbury Museum.  I’d meant to share a post about it when we returned and I was reminded of that when I came across the Flickr album I had set up just the other day.

NOTE: Click on any photo in this post to enlarge it. Then you and your students can read the descriptions and see the drawings in more detail.

From the museum web site: “He studied the workings of nature’s devices and sought to recreate these as practical machines: machines for moving water, for war, for excavating, for drilling and, perhaps most famously, for flight. Exhibition highlights include the tank, the spring powered car, the hang glider, the air screw (the precursor of the helicopter) and a robotic drummer.”

What intrigued me were not only the devices themselves, but Da Vinci’s drawings that accompanied them (careful drawings of plans easily turn a STEM activity into STEAM). The fact that this was a hands-on exhibit multiplied the engagement exponentially.Da Vinci

 

Da Vinci’s designs and devices are a great model for a class engineering/making STEAM experience. What devices and the drawings and explanations that go with them could your students design? Then share them online through Flickr or a blog or wiki or video-conference or … too many ideas to list. Many more photos here.

Da Vinci
Da Vinci
Da Vinci
Da VinciI noted online that this is a traveling exhibit so maybe see if it is scheduled to be coming to a museum near you. And I bet students could find just a bit more about Da Vinci if they search even a bit. Please share other ideas and links to any “Da Vinci inspired” devices your students “make.”

Learning is messy!

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Bee-Bot Collaborative Dance

 Awhile back I (well, the place where I work) was able to purchase 3 Bee-Bot “Hives.” A hive is 6 Bee-bots, a charger plate and a yellow backpack to carry everything around. Once I had them I quickly put together a class for Pre-K – 2 teachers. The first class met about a month ago and our next class met last night.

Along with the teachers sharing out what their students have been up to (they are so excited!!!) and me sharing a few more resources on our class “Bee-Bot” wiki page, I asked them to try out a collaborative Bee-Bot activity I thought up. Now to be fair I don’t know if others have thought of this before and done this already – so I don’t want to take undue credit. I was thinking about how to make what you do already with Bee-Bots have an even stronger collaborative bent when I came up with this:

Pair 2 pairs of students and their shared Bee-Bots and have them work together to choreograph a “dance.” Start on opposite sides of a table or facing each other on the floor. Start out having the Bee-Bots approach each other until they are face to face. Next keep adding to your program so the Bee-Bots go around each other, back and forth etc. They can keep adding commands to make their dance longer and more intricate.

Here is a video of one of the teachers “coding” her Bee-Bot with the program she and her partner designed:
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Here is a clip of their Bee-Bot dance:
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And here is a dance choreographed by another pair of teachers:
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I’m looking forward to seeing their students taking on this challenge in the weeks ahead.

Learning is messy!

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March For Science and Earth Day – Squaw Valley

I spent the evening yesterday up at Lake Tahoe helping to plan the events and activities for the March For Science Lake Tahoe and Earth Day celebration that will happen in the Village at Squaw Valley (map) from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday, April 22nd. I was recruited to be part of this event, instead of the one right here in Reno by scientists and science educators in the area since we work together on several projects.

We will be offering hands on science activities based on Earth science, a climate science short film festival, the “Trashion Show” which is a fashion show of student designed clothing made from trash, live music and much more.

I’ve included an Earth Day graphic for your downloading pleasure:

Graphic thanks to Mini of Manhattan

Learning is messy!

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WyTECC Keynote

STEM Is A Culture, Not a Time of Day or Day of the Week

So much going on right now so my plans to blog more often have taken another hit. One of the things going on that I’m really looking forward to is my participation in the Wyoming Technology Engagement Curriculum Connection (WyTECC) in Rock Springs, Wyoming in early May. May 6th to be exact.

 

I’ll be providing the keynote and 2 to 3 breakout sessions. They asked for a “STEM-ish” theme so I’m redesigning my “STEM Is A Culture, Not a Time of Day or Day of the Week” presentation and plan to build in more STEM experiences. My sessions will focus on STEM inquiry and the important parts that get left out too often because the activity is engaging, the students get excited, time runs short and we skip the parts that really make STEM learning powerful.

Hope to see you there!

Learning is messy!

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Mini Drone Classroom Kit Example

Designed for teacher classroom checkout

In case it helped others think about how to incorporate mini drones at their school I thought I’d share this design. Not presenting this as an ultimate solution, just as an example to build on. Please share links to designs you might have in the comments. As an aside I want to stress: I don’t train teachers that students should never fly drones via a joystick … but I am pretty frank that piloting via joystick is more just play – and that is not a bad thing – it has its place. Having students use apps like Tynker where they have to learn programing skills and problem solve to navigate their drone is really the point.

One awesome unintended consequence of receiving a grant is that sometimes there is “money leftover” – usually because of a cost savings or other circumstance. I just came into some “leftover” funds from 2 grants we have going. Some of that money I spent to get more Parrot Rolling Spider Minidrones. When I wrote the NSUAVCSI grant these drones were $99.99 each, the bid we negotiated got the price down to $62 (we bought 65 of them at once) and now the price is down to $49. Parrot has discontinued this model apparently, and the new models don’t have the wheels and are more than double the $$$ that I can get The Rolling Spiders for … so 62 new ones just arrived.IMG_7229

 

Now that I have some experience with checking out “kits” of drones for teachers to use in their classrooms, I re-designed the kits to make them easier for teachers and students to utilize.

 

 

The plastic tubs we have fit about 8 mini drones each, but since many class sizes here can be 30 students or more, each kit consists of 2 tubs (16 drones total) figuring 2 students per drone.IMG_7227 BTW – 3 students per drone works too, but I like to provide as much flexibility as possible.

As with almost anything that runs on batteries, you can never have too many. So each kit has 4 battery chargers that each charge 4 batteries at a time – as well as 16 extra batteries. The USB cable that comes with each mini drone also fits the charger (which didn’t come with a cable). Removing batteries from the drones with just your fingers to recharge them in a charger is a bit of a struggle and tends to  foster anxiety that something is going to break – so each kit also contains popsicle sticks that work well to gently pry the batteries from their confines.

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A power strip with both regular  3-prong sockets and USB ports rounds out the kit for now.  One thing that is missing are iPads to program and run the drones. I do have 20 on the way, but that is short of what is needed. A fair number of local schools have iPads, but they tend to be older, non-Bluetooth iPads that won’t work with the mini drones. 20 iPads was as far as I could squeeze the “leftover money”.

Hope that helps anyone looking into adding a programming component to your curriculum that also teaches students the care and feeding of aerial robots!

Learning is messy!

 

 

 

 

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NSUAVCSI Classroom Re-Visit

Dilworth STEM Academy

I’ve written about Mike Ismari’s class before (here and here). He received a grant last summer to buy several models of drones and flight simulators to use with students.
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ABOVE: Mike’s drones finally arrived and are stored on shelves his students are building.

Since he had little to no experience with drones he signed up for our institute. His plan was to learn the safety, ethics, programming and operation of UAV’s and then when his drones arrived he’d be ready to go. But, one thing after another delayed his purchase, so he kept checking out NSUAVCSI drones … finally his have arrived along with iPads to operate them. He stopped by my office yesterday to return some Phantom 3’s he’d checked out and told me I had to come by again and check out what his students were up to.

10 students were flying Parrot Air Cargo Minidrones using Tynker to program them. Mike rotates his students through these different activities. Students were paired up – a student that had experience programming the drones with an inexperienced student. The experienced student talked and prodded the new student through the steps to program the drone “around the mountain” -portrayed by a chair on a table. The goal is to take off, fly around the mountain making specific maneuvers meant to keep a front pointing camera (which these don’t have – only down-looking) pointed at the mountain and eventually land back on the spot where it launched. I shot some video of 2 students doing just that.

In this first video (less than a minute long) they are troubleshooting their most recent flight: IMG_7219

Now they run the program with the changes they just made (about 20 seconds)
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Some students were learning and practicing computer programming on the NCLab program our grant provided:IMG_7218

Others were constructing vehicles: DSCF0473

Others were practicing with RealFlight flight simulators (not pictured).

Great “messy” things happening! More photos and videos on the link below:

Flickr Album from the visit

Learning is messy!

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Another Teacher Checks in on Progress with the NSUAVCSI

Nevada STEM Underwater and Aerial Vehicle Computer Science Institute

DSCF0003[1] Sarah Richardson, a high school science teacher at Virginia City High School in Nevada, and also a participant in our NSUAVCSI program checked in with me while I happen to be writing my last post. Virginia City, Nevada is in the Storey County School District, a very rural school district that also happens to be home to the new Tesla Gigafactory and the largest data center in the world the Switch Supernap. And yes, it’s the same Virginia City made famous by the TV show Bonanza.

I delivered Parrot, Phantom 3 and OpenROV drones, 10 Chromebooks, and other materials the grant provided, to Sarah in mid January which was later than planned because of the historic rain and snow we’ve had. Sarah took it from there. Today she emailed me this update on what she and her students have been up to:

 I am having the students (well I am trying to get the students) to make videos about what they have been doing. We have come up with a few road blocks with the drones that they have problem solved. We could not get the drones to pair with the controllers. I told them to figure out what to do, and they did it. I was excited that they actually did it! Once paired they played with the flight simulator. I am hoping that once the weather clears up, we will get them piloting outside!

After they get comfortable with the controls, they are figuring out how to code a course that will take a panoramic picture of the school. Our final project… hopefully, will be to create a topographical map of the school grounds. Then I have grand ideas of using that map to design a sustainable slope in the front of the school. As we have one side of the front of the school that is covered in rocks that flooded the walkway and the other side is full of weeds. I am hoping to have them design a sustainable slope or create a terrace garden of sorts with a native plant garden. That is my vision, but the second part might take a while to do.

As far as the ROVs, (Editor’s note from Brian – she is referring to – OpenROV 2.8 Underwater robots) I have a small group still coming in and working on building their own. We just received the thruster packs from SeaPerch… it took about three weeks to get them from the time I ordered them. So, I think by next week we will have a few homemade ROVs. Then we will focus on building the controllers.

Can’t wait to hear what others in the program have been up to when we meet up for our first follow-up class.

Learning is messy!